The first break-up album of the rock’n’roll era was from the King of Swing. With his career in freefall, Frank Sinatra’s second marriage to Hollywood goddess Ava Gardner was also falling apart. In the maelstrom of constant fighting, Sinatra attempted suicide, then, breaking down regularly in the studio, created an album that perfectly melded loneliness with cool jazz to resurrect his career.

Following his split from singer Shirley Collie in the early 70s, Willie Nelson went one better than most break-up records and produced a country concept album about divorce. One half was devoted to the woman’s perspective, tired of being there for her unfaithful husband and seeking her own life, while the other followed the husband’s gradual realisation that his wastrel ways have lost him his woman. Riding the fine line between maudlin wallowing and emotional heft, it’s an engaging, evocative journey.

Bob Dylan

Blood on the Tracks (1975)

From the early 60s, through their secret marriage in 1965, and on into the early 1970s, Sara Dylan, nee Noznisky, was her partner Bob’s muse and constant adviser. However, when Dylan’s mystical aspect started to move on from her cosmic new age ideas, their marriage began to flounder. The singer-songwriter has always maintained that Blood on the Tracks’, recorded as the relationship fell apart, was not inspired by this split but by Chekhov’s short stories, yet the melancholic, acoustic love songs on the record remain superbly crafted proof to the contrary.

Fleetwood Mac

Rumours (1977)

Fleetwood Mac had to force themselves into the California studio to create Rumours. Christine and John McVie’s marriage had broken down irreparably, to the point where they couldn’t talk to each other, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had a tempestuous relationship, and even the marriage of the band’s rock, Mick Fleetwood, was disintegrating. Raw emotions fed the lyrics, yet the result was hugely catchy pop and, with over 40 million sold, Rumours’ remains possibly the best known break-up album ever.

Anna Gordy, sister of Motown boss Berry, was seventeen years older than Marvin Gaye, but pursued him with a passion, eventually marrying him in 1964. A dozen years later the couple fell apart. Due to Gaye’s spendthrift habits, the divorce court ordered him to give half the royalties from his next album to Anna. Although initially intending a vitriolic collection, the singer eventually wrote a series of set of clear-sighted, lushly soulful biographical songs about his marriage.

ABBA

The Visitors (1981)

ABBA have become terminally associated with cheesy jollity but their final album was marinated in regret resulting from the divorce of the quartet’s two couples. Lathered with minor keys and wistful sorrow, songs such as When All Is Said And Done’, Slipping Through My Fingers and One of Us showcase, a refreshingly different side of ABBA – a raw sadness filters into Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson’s usual brilliantly catchy songwriting.

The golden couple of 70s folk music were reaching the end of their tether in the early 80s, in terms of commercial success – they didn’t even have a record contract – and in terms of each other. Their final album, which many regard as their greatest, is packed with allegorical songs about the disintegration of their former love. A success, especially in the US where the music press finally got behind the duo, they toured it while not even talking to each other.

Bruce Springsteen

Tunnel of Love (1987)

Springsteen, 35, married model and actress Julianne Phillips, 25, in 1985 after a whirlwind romance. It was an impulsive act on both their parts and curtailed a budding romance Springsteen had been nurturing with the woman he eventually hooked up with and is still married to, Patti Scialfa. Springsteen and Phillips divorced in 1989 but clues to what was going on behind closed doors are writ large in this unhappy album. Recorded mostly alone, it’s a welcome, touching flipside to the Boss’s stadium bombast.

It’s little remembered now that when she began her career in Canada in the early 90s, Alanis Morissette was a Britney-style dance-pop moppet. However, a move to Los Angeles, a street mugging and a broken affair with older actor-comedian Dave Coulier (then of successful US sitcom Full House’), changed everything. Morissette blossomed into a singer-songwriter whose frank, feminist and indie-flavoured songs – especially the strident single 'You Oughta Know’ – captured the imagination of wronged women.

These are songs for Pele, the husband-eating Hawaian volcano goddess, not Pele the footballer. Following her split from Eric Rosse, who had been her boyfriend, producer and professional partner since her 1992 debut album, Amos had a series of flings that made her doubt the motives of men in general. She let it all out on a set of baroque, piano-led songs that match her own hurt with a general sense of feminine fury, visually represented by her defiant rifle-cradling cover shot.

Like many great break-up albums, The Boatman’s Call draws in elements of misery from various quarters. Cave’s marriage to Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro was in slow meltdown, he’d had a tortuous affair with the singer PJ Harvey which had also folded, and to top it all he was battling an ongoing drug addiction. The result was an album that moved away from the melodramatic swamp-rock of previous Bad Seeds output to affecting, stripped down ballads and personal ruminations.

Spiritualized

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997)

Jason Pierce was famous for writing love songs to narcotics rather than women, especially in his first band, Spacemen 3. Spiritualized created a more accessible sound full of spaced-out gospel, but it was their third album that finally put him in the charts. Key to its hazy beauty was a sadness which derived from the slow end of Pierce’s relationship with his keyboard player, Kate Radley, as she drifted into the orbit of Richard Ashcroft of The Verve whom she later married.

Indie pop stars Stars aren’t very well known, except in their native Canada. The quintet have never been willing to reveal whether there’s a meaty relationship story behind their critical breakthrough, Set Yourself on Fire, but there’s a hint of something between singers Torquil Cambell and Amy Millan. Or, is the album about someone else entirely? What’s certain is that the delicious angst of songs such as ‘The Big Fight’ are suffused with longing for a broken love.

After her stylish but forthright debut Frank, Amy Winehouse’s second album dived headfirst into the grubby reality of messy relationships. Partly inspired by her blooming but disastrous affair with Blake Fielder-Civil, the best songs on Back to Black are a brutally candid vision of love gone wrong, from the title track’s admission of complete desperation to the ugliness of the brilliant ‘You Know I’m Know Good’ wherein she admits in stark detail to seeking sexual solace elsewhere.

Mononucleosis, with its symptoms of liver damage, constant fatigue and a sore throat, pushed 25-year-old Justin Vernon to quit his dishwashing job and retreat alone to a cabin in Wisconsin. There, over three months, he composed an album of loss and longing devoted not only to his recent ex-girlfriend but the end of his band, DeYarmond Edison. The resultant songs, sparse, delicate creatures all, take listeners into the isolation of its recording as well as that of its creator.

Every Malcolm Middleton album appears to be a break-up album but since the self-effacing Scottish guitar troubadour keeps his personal life well hidden, who knows what goes on beneath the surface. Nonetheless, his most recent and bitterly poetic album, Waxing Gibbous is jammed with mournful songs of lost love, such as 'Make Up Your Mind’ a final doleful plea for his lover to stay. Sample album lyric “Weeping in my rocking chair, I’m going nowhere.”

This Grammy-winning, best-selling album would never have been created if Adele Adkins had not broken up with her boyfriend at the beginning of its recording. The album’s most famous song, Someone Like You, was written when she found out that her ex had become engaged to someone else straight after their relationship ended. The song makes peace with him but elsewhere Adele lets rip on bitter, angry numbers such as 'Rolling in the Deep'.

Rappers tend not to deal on record with the end of long term relationships. New York hip-hop star Nas isn’t hugely forthcoming on Life is Good but he touches upon the pain of a separation, notably by appearing on the album’s cover sombrely clutching the green dress in which his recent ex-wife, the singer Kelis, had married him. The tone is thoughtful, with Nas rapping about parenthood and adult responsibilities, and contains 'Bye Baby' which tackles his marriage and divorce with impressive lyrical vigour.

American singer songwriter John Grant has had his fair share of life’s downs over the years, dealing with homophobia, drug abuse, and much else, documented in mordantly witty fashion on his debut â Queen of Denmark’. That album’s title track fired off a vicious tirade at ex-lover TC. This riveting follow-up saw TC in the crosshairs once again on spooked electro-pop that veered between heart-rending obsession and venomous put-downs in which Grant compared the effect of his former beau to the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

The Nashville alt-country duo Joy Williams and John-Paul White are both married to other partners but their critically acclaimed creative pairing split painfully during a tour of Europe in 2012. Their second and final album is riven with angst, upset and notions of sin (Williams is a devout Christian). Where their debut was overly sweet in places, the follow-up is red-blooded and raw with regret.